Notices by Dan Morris (coldfish@sfba.social), page 2

@evan I've never had a single bad experience on mastodon. It's pretty amazing.

@freemo @scottsantens

This idea that giving someone support money or basic services is just enabling them is a falsehood that's been pushed heavily over the years, yet debunked just as effectively as trickle down economics.

I was living in an abandoned school bus and got the Catholic church to just give me free food. no questions asked.

When I got a job, I tithed 10% of my income for a decade.

For years, I lived in a house that is a family home and I didn't pay rent. I started a business and now have 2 offices, employ several people support a wife and 3 children, even taking on a foster child and supporting other family members in need.

Did that free food and rent cause me to be a layabout or did it enable me?

I don't think that everyone should get a free-ride, but I think people fall down and when they fall *all the way* down to drug addicted homelessness, that's easily avoidable if it's clear that there is a minimal level of food, housing and medical care easily accessible.

@freemo @scottsantens I used to believe this, but then the means-testing becomes a massive mess and subject to abuse. It's much much much cheaper to just give everyone a chunk and be done with it. "You a billionare? Here's your UBI. ". "You on the street? Here's your UBI"

It's not a free ride either. It's the difference between life and death for a lot of people.

And a LOT of families and friend groups have someone who's just beyond help. They just can't support them anymore due to drugs or mental issues or whatever, but feel horrible knowing they're on the street. To be able to have my idiot cousin come to me and say, "hey, I need some money to eat", and me being able to say, "Dude, you get $x.xx each month. That's enough and you need to stay the F away from me and my family".

It's either UBI (which I honestly don't think will work well enough) or public housing/food/medicine at some level where the biggest drug addicted idiot on the planet STILL won't be crapping on my front doorstep.

@l82be @feditips @Iancylkowski @theatticdwellers

Anyone can scrape data from the fediverse if it's listed as public data, otherwise it wouldn't work. FB Twitter, Google, etc... are private and allow some access, but that's it.